Sekou Cooke: 3D Turntables

Sekou Cooke is an architect, researcher, educator, and curator born in Jamaica and based in Charlotte, NC. He is the newly appointed Director of the Master of Urban Design program at UNC Charlotte and a recipient of the 2021/2022 Nasir Jones HipHop Fellowship at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. Within his professional practice, sekou cooke STUDIO, he brings thoughtful processes and rigorous experimentation to a vast array of project types from public, non-profit, and residential works in New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina, to mixed-use projects and tenant improvements in California, to speculative developments locally and internationally.

Sekou’s current research centers on the emergent field of Hip-Hop Architecture, a theoretical movement reflecting the core tenets of hip-hop culture with the power to create meaningful impact on the built environment and give voice to the marginalized and underrepresented within design practice. This work has been widely disseminated through his writings, lectures, and symposia, and is the subject of his 2021 monograph Hip-Hop Architecture. His work is also featured in the landmark exhibition, Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America, at the Museum of Modern Art.

Through his research, practice, and other academic endeavors, Sekou hopes to leave an equally lasting impact on ivory towers and underserved communities. His ultimate goal is mastery of craft and world domination.

Sekou holds a B.Arch from Cornell University, an M.Arch from Harvard University, and is licensed to practice architecture in New York and North Carolina.

Sekou will discuss his new book, Hip-Hop Architecture, his participation in the MoMA exhibition, Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America, and other current work testing hip-hop architectural principles and redefining Blackness in architecture.